Improving humanitarian action by making people the focus of program design and performance.

Development Partnership Survey

Keystone offers a unique service for International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO). The Development Partnership Survey allows INGOs to have access to detailed, actionable feedback from their local partner organizations and compare their results with those of other INGOs.

The Keystone Development Partnership Survey was launched in 2010. Since then, over 70 INGOs have commissioned the survey and 16 of them have repeated the process.

"The results of the 2010 survey motivated us to reflect on what it means to be a better partner in the countries where IRC works. The rich insights provided in the 2013 report will help us to continue improving our own capacities to partner and to prioritize organizational investments in response to our partners’ voices. Putting local actors in the driving seat of their own development is a strategic priority for IRC, and the Keystone reports play an important role in helping us deliver on that commitment." -John Keys, IRC Senior Vice President, Programs

The Development Partnership Survey uses a standard questionnaire that touches upon the following aspects of the relationship between the INGO and its local partners:

Quantity and type of funding

Non-financial support

Application process

Monitoring and reporting

Relationship and communications

Each INGO can also add customized questions to the questionnaire.

The survey is administered independently by Keystone, who guarantees the anonymity of respondents.

INGOs receive a confidential report detailing how their partners rate their performance, both in absolute terms and in comparison to benchmarks of other INGOs that have also been part of the process. You can see sample reports in some of the INGOs websites that, in an effort to increase accountability, responsibility and transparency with their partners, have publicly released their reports, along with their plans to improve. For a list of INGOs who have published their reports, and to read them, please click here.

“The confidential survey enabled us to validate with robust data what we had only been able to get glimpses of previously through anecdotal information. The sector benchmarking really helped us to affirm our strengths and highlight areas for further improvement.”
Carol Miller, Oxfam Canada.

Now it's your turn to hear from your partners!

Keystone can administer the survey to your partners at any time, providing comparisons to the existing data set of over 4,000 completed local partner questionnaires. Please contact us to discuss running your partnership survey.

Keystone also uses the aggregate data from the Development Partnerships Survey for carrying out analysis regarding the INGO sector. Click here to read a short report on the main headlines for the INGO sector emerging from our dataset.

See exactly how well you're doing compared to other INGOs - and at a fraction of the cost and effort of running your own survey.